Pittsburgh Permaculture » General Thoughts

3 Nitrogen Fixing Plants for the Forest Garden

Michelle — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:48:00 +0000

Nitrogen fixing shrubs are valuable in agroforestry systems. They can be integrated into perennial agriculture systems to restore and maintain nutrient cycling and fertility self-reliance. The following 3 nitrogen fixing plants have additional uses and benefits as well. This is a quick snap shot of nitrogen fixing plants. Please share your experiences with these [...]

Tips for Growing Lettuces and Salad Mix

Michelle — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 18:43:26 +0000

Growing lettuce and salad mix is fairly simple and can be done in small spaces, including pots. Right now I am growing a mix in a fairly small pot. If only the robins would leave it alone, I suspect I’ll be able to harvest in the next few weeks! I also spent time growing [...]

5 Steps to Growing Lettuces & Salad Mix

Michelle — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:33:44 +0000

Growing lettuce and salad mix is very easy and can be done in the smallest of spaces. It is also a great crop to grow fresh since the shelf life is quite short. It is also a fairly high demand vegetable for restaurants, making it a possible cash crop for small [...]

Food4Wealth Review: Less Work, More Food with the Ecological Garden

Michelle — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 19:04:18 +0000

Personally, I have had lots of fun growing food and herbs. I have also spent many hard, sweaty hours pulling weeds and preparing beds. Eventually, I managed to develop garden beds that perform similarly to a Food4Wealth bed; however, this was after obtaining a Master’s degree in Sustainable Systems, working in a market garden, [...]

What is Permaculture?

Juliette — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:55:29 +0000

Permaculture is about intelligent design that works with nature. The basic premise of permaculture is to increase human sustainability by creating self-sufficient systems that literally become more than the sum of their parts.

Village Homes in Davis, California (photo by Wayne Senville, Planning Comm’rs Journal, www.plannersweb.com).

That is to say, each aspect of the system [...]

Come Join Us at the Food Forest this Saturday!

Michelle — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:23:22 +0000

We will be working at the food forest on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of each month from 10am-12pm. The food forest is located at 4700 Irvine St in Hazelwood. It was 4 adjacent vacant lots owned by the URA and now hosts a diversity of edible and otherwise functional tree, bush and groundcover [...]

The plastic bag, stick and a brick trick!

Troy — Fri, 06 May 2011 19:29:33 +0000

This is a quick and easy way to train fruit trees to get the branch angle you want.

Materials list:

A couple plastic grocery bags A straight stick or piece of bamboo A few small rocks A fruit tree you want to train

BEFORE

An apple tree with an upright branch [...]

10 Methods for Soil Improvement

Troy — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 04:03:20 +0000

The following is a list of 10 easy and effective approaches to improving your soil. We have also noted the benefits that each technique provides and included a description of why each one is important.

Adjust the soil pH to optimal levels (6-7)- general (nutrient availability) – The pH of soil dictates the ability [...]

Tree Planting with Pittsburgh Permaculture

Guest — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 23:55:08 +0000

Over the summer, I had an interesting email; Catherine from Ireland was visiting Pittsburgh and wanted to help out a bit, here is what she wrote about her experience.

-Troy

- – -

Tree planting with Pittsburgh Permaculture

After reading an article on ecological travel and responses to peak oil, I decided [...]

Rocks in the Garden

Troy — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:54:48 +0000

I am exploring the use of large rocks strategically spread throughout the garden to aide in the thawing process in spring. In the warm months, and in the winter when the rocks aren’t covered in snow, rocks buffer the diurnal temperature swings. That is to say they make the micro-climate around them a more [...]